Self extracting installer using IExpress

Question

I have created Visual studio setup project as MSI package. which uses other prerequisites which are located in along the msi package in their respective folders. To club all these in to a single file i have created a self extracting setup project using IExpress.

But when IExpress is trying to run my setup, its failing because the MSI installer is trying to locate the other prerequisites in their respective folders. But I did not understand how to create folders using IExpress.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I was in so hurry to wait for the answer and as the deployment of the package was failing when delivered. Finally i found that i can create a self extracting setup package through winrar as SFX package. To it can add folders and can specify what to do post extracting where i can run my setup.exe and can even clean the files extracted after final step.

Thanks.

Answer 2

Iexpress do not work with folders "inside", a workaround is to create one zip file with the folder structure inside, create a a vbs script to unzip the zip file, and a bat file control the flow. With IExpress we have a strange situation, because the default deployment of the IExpress is in %temp% we do not have control of this folder, windows will del the extracted files when he wants... If we create a iexpress file that runs a bat file after being extracted, you need to use the param /W or /wait with the start commmand, because if you do not use this, when the .bat file ends the execution, windows will think that you dont need more those files, and will remove all files that you extracted less the exe or msi that you called, and your dependences will not be there. I think this is a behavior that iexpress start, because if you manually put those files in %temp% folder this "auto-clean" will not executed.